• AcidSmiley [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It was all over philosophy classes back then, and it doesn't surprise me. I was deep in my egg back then, i didn't understand any of this stuff as the Wachowskys intended it. The trans stuff is written in a way that you only get when you've been through those phases of coming out yourself, or when you've been told what it means. Because it doesn't use any of the usual trans metaphors that would be about physical metamorphosis and shapeshifting, about becoming somebody else or being seen as somebody else or always having been somebody else and then physically changing into that true self. Instead, it's probably the first trans story that sticks entirely to the mental aspect of transitioning, to how that means to free yourself from lies you've been told all your life and realize what's actually going on. And when you talk about transness like that, when you keep it just to these moments of self-realization and cracking the code and finally shaking off false consciousness and seeing through the bs, that translates so well to other things that people have no problem reading all kinds of stuff into it. And it works perfectly well as a musing on philosophy, it works perfectly well as a story about revolution, it works perfectly well as the beats of an action flick, it just also happens to completely capture the mood of discovering you're trans, moving out of your eggshell and to start experimenting. Because that is a deeply revolutionary act as well.